A picture is worth a 1000 words. Remember where the music at Starbuck use to sit. Apparently teddy bears in bee suits bring in more revenue. Not a cd to be found in the place.
I need to go into the bear business:)

This video was posted on my forum. It really is how i think we should work online. You have to open up and share things that you care about, that have value for yourself and your community.

How do you interact? What else should we all be doing?

My friend Neil made this really great mashup video with my new single and “the Batman”. Im a big fan and the new movie looks like its going to be amazing!

Here the Digg link

At NXNE a lot of musicians were asking the question: What should I do?

Here’s my 20 cents:

1. There are no gatekeepers, don’t wait for that deal. They are few and far between these days. Try and get your music out to as many people as possible. That means building your community on the web. That’s were everyone goes to discover, listen and buy music. So that’s were you need to be.

2. Forget the traditional website. Think about the sites you visit everyday. Do any of them have content that’s 6 months old? No, so…

Move to a blog based platform where your blog is front and center. Use blogging and micro blogging (your Status) to keep your page fresh and always updated. No more old news, old photos, old videos, old tour dates. Make it about what your doing today. Open up your creative process to your audience. It’s a bit frightening at first but once you start it can become addictive. Trust me, this can lead you to being even more creative.

Note: you can get a simple blog page at wordpress.com or blogger, there are lots of free alternatives. You can use them with your own URL. Pay a designer by the hour to help customize the look and feel. I shouldn’t cost a fortune. Because blog platforms are built like social networks, they have a simple backend and you can easily do all the updating of your content yourself.

3.Hub out your blog page.
The idea is to blog and micro blog in one place, and then have that information feed to the rest your social networks automatically through RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Your goal is to have a simple system so you can upload once and get your art/process out to as many places as possible on the web.

Note: Start with Flickr, Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, Ilike, LastFM and Twitter.
That it in short form. I’m on a flight to Calgary so more later☺_

Remember. Go where the people are.

Thoughts or questions?

I had a great time in Toronto first with my good friend Mitch Joel speaking at the Canadian Marketing Association, From Mass To Grass . And then, at NXNE where we were joined by another friend Michael McCarty,, President of EMI Music Publishing Canada for a discussion on the future of the music industry and the Internet.

If you made it out to either event I’d love to hear your thoughts or feedback.

I do a ton of testing of social apps for Davidusher.com. Seeing what works, how information routes and what is going to give my users a positive and useful experience. Lately a lot of developers have been kind enough to show me their new applications. I love seeing new toys in various stages of development.

The applications I like best all have one thing in common, they are:

Dead Simple.

Its like in the art world, we need the crazies who blow themselves up on stage to push the boundaries for everyone else. (Will Friendfeeder ever be a mass tool?) The echo chamber and first adopters play with everything, testing, pushing them to the limits. The stuff that will stick with the “mass” users has to be simple in idea and function. Real folks only have room in their already crowded lives for a few web tools. To be an application or network people are going to use you have to fulfill a simple need and deliver. It sounds obvious but you’d be surprised how easy it is to make an application confusing.
Again, Dead simple.

I’m always looking to play with new toys.
Have you discovered any new apps or networks you love?

I’m headed to Toronto on Thursday to speak at two interesting events. First my good friend Mitch Joel and I will be chatting about all things social media at the Canadian Marketing Association, From Mass To Grass on June 12th. On the 13th Mitch and I head over to NXNE and are joined my Michael McCarty, President of EMI Music Publishing Canada for a roundtable discussion on the future of the music industry and the Internet called, It Better be Free, or How Can You Sell What Others Are Practically Giving Away?

If you are make it out to either event, don’t forget to say hello:)

I saw Maire Chouinard’s new piece at the FTA last week and loved it. Its not for everyone but for me, amazing. Creativity pushed forward. Reminds me to blow up my brain and dream pink elephants!
If you get the chance. Go:)

Nat Torkington on the O’Reilly radar pondered why Twitter gets a pass.

“It feels like we’re on Twitter’s side, and that’s an amazing and rare thing for a company to have. Any other startup and the users would have bolted to any of the improbably-named Twitter-clone startups after Twitter’s first weekend with no tweets.”

Maybe because the conversation is casual. We like Twitter . We like the cute name. Everyone is there already and to move to the “new Twitter” is, well just a pain. If Twitter is down it really doesn’t effect business. Its just not that important. Its loose conversation. If disqus goes down and i loose or cant get my blog comments, that would be different (the reason i keep stalling on installing it).
But twitter is casual, and if its down, i just move on to something else till its back.

When Twitter goes down do you get pissed or just chill?

My friend Mitch Joel wrote about an article in the new Business Week where Chris DeWolfe of Myspace talked about their users and usage. I have to say I was shocked.

Chris DeWolfe:
“At the time that News Corp. bought us, we had somewhere around 22 million unique users. Now I think we’re close to 120 million unique users worldwide. Our site has also become less of a niche site, where in the early days it was the creative trendsetters that were really driving the growth — from musicians to artists to actors to comedians. Now it’s everybody. So the demographic has widened a great deal. Forty percent of all mothers in the U.S., believe it or not, are on MySpace. Twelve percent of all Internet minutes are spent on MySpace. Forty-five percent of all the users on MySpace are over the age of 35.”

Excuse me, 40% of all mothers and 12% of internet minutes in the US are spent on Myspace. That is one wacked out statistic. Even if its close to true its incredible. I think as first adopters its easy to forget the power of the original. Most of us have moved on to the newest, shiniest thing. I can barely bring myself to look at the mess that is Myspace. But apparently lots of people still love it.

Maybe I’ll have to give Myspace another look and spend more time sorting through their confused dashboard page.

Do you still use Myspace?